frica is a continent of tremendous wealth Aand enormous untapped potential. Most of Africa is also young: we have 420 million young people aged 15 to 35. By 2050, the numbers are expected to almost double. Each year, 10 to 12 million young Africans join the job market.

Visionary leadership suggests that we must do things differently if we are to anticipate different outcomes in the not-to-distant future.

At the African Development Bank, we are focused on building the capacity of our young people. We also have a responsibility to turn Africa’s largest demographic asset into an economic dividend.

Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina In conjunction with our many partners and donors, the Bank’s President 54-member nations across the continent are working to reduce African Development Bank economic and social threats that deprive young men and women of opportunity, and that cause many to undergo a perilous – and too often, deadly – journey migrating,through the desert or across the Mediterranean Sea. d r Jobs for Youth is strategically investing in our youth, so that tomorrow a new horizon of a dynamic and prosperous Africa will be o a reality. w I invite you to join us in this ambitious, but achievable goal. e r o F

1 A secondary school dorm in Lesotho is more than a place to sleep

hildren at Molelle Secondary School in CLesotho used to trek up to 2 kilometers – each way – to class daily. Not anymore. An African Development Bank-funded Education Quality Enhancement Project helped construct boarding facilities for these high school students. Secondary education in the mountain kingdom is not free, nor compulsory. The provision of housing improved student safety, student performance and, school administrators say, student well- being. Both students and teachers – who also received training under the project – say they appreciate the new housing, and how it has helped improve the quality of their lives.

Zimbabwe Jobs for Youth in Africa program provides hope

imbabwe faces unique economic challenges, including an estimated 90 percent Z unemployment rate. The African Development Bank’s Jobs for Youth in Africa initiative is working to improve the quality of life for Zimbabwe’s upcoming generation of entrepreneurs. Sharon Muchena is one of six entrepreneurs who successfully completed garment making courses at the Motare Vocational Training Centre, courtesy of a Bank-funded Youth and Tourism Enhancement Project. Now, Muchena produces sweat suits, school uniforms and other clothing for her community in the country’s fourth largest city.

Muchena and her colleagues run one of four micro, small and medium enterprises set up and registered in the final stage of the project. Muchena says she’s delighted to engage in productive activity and says her garment start-up has improved her income level and livelihood.

2 Why Jobs for Youth in Africa?

Voices of Youth “When you receive an internship, the first thing they tell you is to forget everything you learned at school. A university doesn’t mean anything in real life.” – Rose, Rwanda

frica’s greatest asset is its youth. The Youth in fragile states face additional challenges, with continent’s population of 1.2 billion is projected economic opportunity diminished by instability and A to more than double by 2050, when Africa will the lack of institutional capacity. The cost of be home to one-fourth of the world’s population. Africa unemployment is also pervasive and severe. Long will remain the world’s youngest region, with a median spells of youth unemployment or vulnerable age of 25. Properly harnessed, this young growing employment permanently lower future productive working-age population will drive Africa’s economic potential and earnings, and individuals with limited transformation. income have restricted access to health and education services. Limited economic opportunities However, this opportunity could also pass Africa by. also fuel conflict and instability: 40 percent of young The majority of youth do not have secure work or people who join rebel movements worldwide are economic futures. Of the 420 million youth aged motivated by a lack of work. between 15 and 35 in Africa today, the majority are unemployed, have insecure jobs or are in casual The lack at employment opportunities also cause employment. On average, youth unemployment is extensive migration from the continent as young roughly double the rate for adults. Significant variations people seek better lives and resources to provide for do, however, occur across African countries. their families at home. In 2015, 14 percent of migrants worldwide were born in Africa. The number The challenge is multifaceted. Ten to 11 million youth of migrants from Africa increased by 2.7 percent come on to the job market each year, but only three each year from 2000 to 2015. Also, youth million formal jobs are created annually. The lack of unemployment constitutes a failure to capitalize on paying jobs push youth into the informal sector, one of the continent’s greatest assets: its large and where jobs are typically less stable and have lower growing population of talented young people. wages. Women seeking both formal and informal jobs are particularly affected, often facing greater To slow this migration, it is necessary to improve the barriers to opportunities. Thirty-five percent of female quality of life for the people of Africa and achieve youth are not in employment, education, or training inclusive growth. This means addressing the youth (NEET), compared with only 20 percent of men. employment challenge.

3 1.2 Billion 420 Million PEOPLE YOUTH AGED 15-35

10-12 MILLION YOUTH ENTER THE JOB MARKET

36 OUT OF THE WORLDʼS 40 YOUNGEST EACH YEAR, ONLY 3 MILLION COUNTRIES FIND FORMAL JOBS ARE IN AFRICA

YOUTH VOICES “ITC in school is all basi c, it’s nothing that encoura ges creativity, it’s not hands-o n.”

- Hassan, Egypt

4 Enter Jobs for Youth in Africa

OVER THE NEXT DECADE JOBS FOR YOUTH IN AFRICA WILL... GENERATE 25 MILLION NEW JOBS

he African Development Bank established actors to coordinate action. Partners are involved Jobs for Youth in Africa (JfYA) to address at the national, regional, and continent-wide levels T the continent’s youth employment and include African governments, private sector challenges. Its aims are to expand employment companies, civil society organizations, and opportunities, strengthen human capital, and build regional bodies. durable labor market linkages. It plans to create 25 million jobs and impact 50 million youth over the While Jobs for Youth in Africa builds on other youth next decade. employment efforts and lessons learned, it is unique in adopting an ecosystem approach. It JfYA involves collaboration between the African addresses interrelated supply, demand, and Development Bank and key partners in the public linkage challenges to youth employment, deploys and private sectors across Africa. The Bank’s a range of policy, research, programming, and engagement in its 54 regional member countries investment interventions, and focuses on working across Africa ensures programming is aligned with a broad coalition of partners. It also pays with country priorities and the needs of African particular attention to female youth and youth in youth. fragile states.

The African Development Bank has programmatic, This focus will enable Jobs for Youth in Africa to financing, and research tools at its disposal - along bring coherence and scale to youth employment with the convening power to bring together key and entrepreneurship efforts across the continent. 5 f Youth Voices o

“Agri-business training “To make the industrial is really exciting and needed. apprenticeship program work, To be successful you must offer it during it must emphasize the university application delay. modernization of agricultural Get the students early techniques and enrich when they are waiting cooperatives to grow.” for the university!” – Rosine, Côte d’Ivoire – Grace, Nigeria

6 How Jobs for Youth in Africa Will Achieve Its Mission

INTEGRATION INNOVATION Innovation activities incubate, Integration activities assess, and scale promising incorporate a youth employment policies and interventions focus into both the Bank’s systems and its engagement with regional JfYA will launch flagship programs across the member countries continent: program models focused on MSME creation and skills development in high-priority JfYA builds on the Bank’s capacity to sectors will be tailored to country contexts, imple - address job creation and employment mented in partnership with the private sector, eva - through incor poration of youth luated, refined, and scaled. employment considerations in monitoring and evaluation systems, Three programs in Agriculture Bank planning documents, and in Bank projects that have high employment • Creating new rural micro-enterprises, potential. • Equipping skilled youth to launch larger-scale agribusinesses, and JfYA supports countries throughout • Providing human capital for agro-industrializa - Africa in adopting policies and tion. building institutions favorable to employment by elevating youth Two programs in ICT employment in strategic planning processes, guiding • Strengthening digital literacy and computational policymakers, and providing thinking in secondary schools financial and technical • Developing coding academies that teach skills assistance for policy reform ranging from basic digital design to advanced and capacity deve lop ment. coding languages 7 INVESTMENT

Youth skills enhancement

• Developing skills enhancement zones near industrial clusters to train workers for full-time roles with employers in these clusters. • Create an Enabling Youth Employment Index that measures youth employment outcomes and enabling policies within countries over time. • Establish an Innovation and Information Lab that incubates new ideas, supports entre preneurs, and conducts cutting-edge re sear ch. • Launch a series of Private Sector Challenge Prizes that provide financial rewards and incentivize private sector actors to develop high- impact, market- based solutions to employ ment and entrepreneurial challenges.

Jobs for Youth in Africa Facility

• The Jobs for Youth in Africa Facility will be the primary public sector vehicle for financing JfYA. This resource envelope will consist of funding commitments from the Bank and external funders- including direct co- financing agreements with external funders for specific activities and the use of existing Bank funds and facilities. The Bank will leverage partnerships for activities that have a strong value proposition beyond the Bank, including: flagship programs, other projects that incorporate youth employment, the Enabling Youth Employment Index, the Innovation and Information Lab, policy support to the regional member countries, and private sector employment challenges tied to financial rewards.

Unlocking private capital constraints to investment

This includes focused activities that will catalyze private sector investment to stimulate the employment and entrepreneurship ecosystem by:

• Reducing financing risks by providing guarantees to financial institutions for on-lending to SMEs and supporting student loan finance programs to increase lending to students; • Expanding access to capital through investing in the Boost Africa Investment Fund,1 providing lines of credit to financial institutions for on-lending to SMEs, and making direct investments in businesses that drive youth employment.

8 How partners can get involved

The African Development Bank is calling on development partners, the private sector, foundations and all African stakeholders to get involved. Jobs for Youth in Africa offers interested partners tailored opportunities to engage:

Knowledge Generation Job linkages and Incubation Private sector employers can partner on specific Research and academic institutions, entrepre - programs and gain skilled labor to grow and neurial networks, and others can share best expand their businesses. practices and build the evidence base on pro - mising interventions and also jointly incubate Funding promising new solutions. Public, private, and philanthropic institutions can Program Design pool resources to coordinate efforts and maxi - and Implementation mize impact.

Private, public, and civil society organiza- These partnerships will enable Jobs for Youth in tions can provide inputs to program design Africa to achieve its ambitions and equip young and support implementation for key acti- people across the continent with the tools to vities. realize their full economic potential.

Voices of Youth “Vocational training programs are only useful if they are linked closely to employers with a strong commitment to hire youth. Otherwise, the youth will never be attracted to such programs.” – Diana, Rwanda

9 10 The African Development Bank

The African Development Bank aims to achieve sustainable economic development and social progress through investments in its regional member countries, policy advice, and technical assistance.

Its work on youth employment includes the launch of the Joint Youth Employment Initiative for Africa, a collaboration between the African Development Bank, the African Union Commission, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and the International Labor Organization.

The Bank has an extensive portfolio of employment-related projects, including more than USD 1.6 billion of investment in education, with 34 percent of those funds going toward technical vocational education and training over the past decade. The Bank also provides budget support for policy reform – such as the Rwanda Skills, Employability, and Entrepreneurship Program, focused on reducing skills mismatches in the labor market.

The African Development Bank also facilitates entrepreneurship, including through the Africa SME program and Souk At-tanmia, a partnership with United Nations agencies, private sector actors, donors, and civil society organizations to provide grants and technical assistance to entrepreneurs in Tunisia. Under the program, 61 young entrepreneurs received funding and coaching to grow or to start their businesses, with approximately four jobs created per grantee. The African Development Bank is also a member of the Let’s Work global partnership to address employment.

11 African Development Bank supports young women to excel in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields in Botswana

otswana is keen to diversify its economy beyond B the diamond industry and the African Development Bank is supporting a push to provide Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills training nationwide. The Bank funds Botswana’s “Support to Education Quality” and its technical, vocational education and training programs. It also recently supported young women (pictured) improve their understanding of to science and technology – and make presentations at a recent National Science Fair.

The Bank’s funds have also helped source new science laboratory equipment at a college in Francistown, Botswana, in addition to the training of science teachers at the school.

12 Voices of Youth

“When you receive an internship, the first thing they tell you is to forget everything you learned at school. A university doesn’t mean anything in real life.” – Rose, Rwanda

“ICT in school is all basic, it’s nothing that encourages creativity. It’s not hands-on.” – Hasan, Egypt

“Agri-business training is really exciting and needed. To be successful it must emphasize modernization of agricultural techniques and enrich cooperatives to grow.” – Rosine, Côte d’Ivoire

“For the industrial apprenticeship program to work, you must offer it during the university application delay. Get the students early when they are waiting for the university!” – Grace, Nigeria

“Vocational training programs are only useful if they are linked closely with employers who have a strong commitment to offer jobs. Otherwise, the youth are never attracted to such programs.” – Diana, Rwanda

AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK GROUP Communication and External Relations Department Rue Joseph Anoma 01 BP 1387 Abidjan 01 (Côte d’Ivoire) Tel.: +225 20 26 44 44 • Fax: +225 20 21 31 00 www.afdb.org

To get involved with Jobs for Youth in Africa ?

Please contact: [email protected]

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